Sleiman Solves Homeless Problem, Becomes Nobel Prize Candidate – City Vies For Second Place – Times-Union Wants Pulitzer For Reporting

The last time I checked, the homeless population, whether here or anywhere else in the world, was made up of living, breathing, feeling human beings. You wouldn’t get that sense after reading Mary Kelli Palka’s piece in this morning’s Times Union titled “Riverwalk Removing More Than Benches.” I would place this “article” in the category of insensitive meets callous meets greed meets embarrassment.

It would seem, based upon the article, that Toney Sleiman, in a philanthropic attempt to save this city (or at least his precious Jacksonville Landing) from the scourge that is the homeless, has realized that the entire homeless problem can be solved by removing public benches which these, I don’t know, vermin, shall we say, use to sit and lay down on. That’s right, remove benches from downtown and, PRESTO, the homeless go away.

Not to be outdone, the article continues by describing an attempt by the City to also confront the homeless issue head on by, you got it, removing its own benches along the Northbank Riverwalk. However, this purging was prevented when City Councilman Bill Bishop demanded that the benches be returned. The solution, he declared, is not in removing benches, but in beefing up police patrol, presumably to make sure the homeless don’t alight in one place for too long or otherwise bother us decent folk. Mr. Bishop, with authority, sincerity and compassion, was quoted, “The homeless aren’t going to care. They’re going to camp in the bushes if there aren’t benches.” Yes, I suspect someone out there would love to add, “Because, you know those homeless -- give them a bottle of MD 20/20 and they’ll sleep just about anywhere – and love it!”

I’ve now spent a good portion of the morning trying to figure out the point of this article. My best guess is that, in an attempt to salvage the present spiraling failure that is the Landing, Sleiman somehow coaxed the T-U to write a piece touting how the homeless have been removed once and for all from the Landing, thereby making it a safe place for clean and respectable folks to dance and sing and spend money (the clouds have parted, the birds are chirping, flowers are blooming and somewhere in Munchkinland the Lollipop Kids are singing “Ding Dong, the witch is dead”). Having just recently had lunch at the Landing, I can assure Mr. Sleiman that the homeless people sitting on benches by the river are the least of his worries.

In the vein of Swift’s A Modest Proposal, I recommend that Toney Sleiman and the Jacksonville government stop wasting its money playing musical benches and just cook up all the homeless and serve them at the next city council meeting (leftovers can be served at one of the mayor's next tailgating parties). Having spent the first two years of my legal career as counsel at the New York City Department of Homeless Services, I can pretty much guarantee you that removing downtown amenities such as benches is not really going to do much in curbing homelessness.